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I don't have an update, but I did get to watch the (rare?) occasion of my Blue Legged Hermit Crab swapping into a bigger shell, realizing he didn't like it, and swapping back to the original.

Not only did I get to watch it, but I got it on video! I will definitely upload it tonight. Has anyone else seen this happen? I know that mine has swapped shells before, but I have never got to see it.

Not very rare, you will see it more often as they grow and if you leave larger shells around for them. I have a hermit that I've kept for nearly 6 months and he grew from about 1 inch to a monstrous 5 inches......

If you have several hermits and not as many shells around, you will see them fight each other for the shell. It's quite interesting.

Think with logic and rationality more than emotion. Act with moderation and consideration. Contemplate ideals and realistic goals and weigh out possibilities and options. Temper not with personal delusions or false hope but learn to accept and move on.

Thanks! Yeah it is cool. I know it may seem inhumane to think things like that are cool, but don't the same things happen in nature? If you are trying to recreate nature, and you have hermits robbing shells from each other and from snails--You must be doing something right, right?

If a snail or hermit dies is you guys tanks, do you leave the corpse in the tank to be consumed? I have left snails, hermits, and my lawnmower blenny in the tank when they all died, and I never got a mini cycle or anything. I just didn't feed the tank for about 3 days. None of these died at the same time. I wouldn't risk leaving multiple corpses in there.

Generally speaking, if it's not something big that died or a massive die off of some sort, I let nature do the work inside the tank.

Think with logic and rationality more than emotion. Act with moderation and consideration. Contemplate ideals and realistic goals and weigh out possibilities and options. Temper not with personal delusions or false hope but learn to accept and move on.

I'm probably going to get some hate from this, but I decided to add a canister filter to the equation.

After doing lots of research, I found that there is nothing wrong with running a canister filter on a reef aquarium. In fact, many people do it. Much more than I expected. I wanted something that I could put an in-line heater on, add water volume, add mechanical filtration, create surface agitation without having a hideous MJ600 in the tank, store more live rock, and house carbon and phosphate removal media. Since adding a sump isn't possible with this current stand, I went with the Fluval 405. Now, I got it for $10 from a friend, so I couldn't pass it up. I had been tossing around the idea of adding a canister, anyway. My only concern is that I may have trouble finding an in-line heater that is compatable with the Fluval style flex-hose. Any input on that would be great.

Bonus! Doing water changes is going to be super easy now, and MUCH less of a mess. I am simply going to disconnect the hose connector, carry the tub outside and dump it out. Well, dump out half of the water, wash the canister and rinse the live rock, then dump the rest of the water out. I am not using any other bio-media in the filter. Just a couple of sponges for mechanical cleaning. I will be taking turns rinsing one of the two sponges each water change.